Dawnlark Plains And kiss her lips and take her hands

"I can't," she added when she chanced to look his way and saw the grief sweeping his expression. What would she do in Silver Creek? She would be destructive, if not completely to her own self. She would return and attempt to overthrow Spring, especially now that she had little left to keep on going for. It wasn't like she was suicidal, but with nothing to lose, she would attempt to gain something through any means necessary... and in so doing, would shatter her pack.

She couldn't do it. Part of her wanted to, as payment for not having what belonged to her returned, but she simply couldn't. She cared too much about Casmir and Laika to do it to them, and deep down beneath her self-contempt and her jealousy, she knew Spring deserved better than her rage.

"I will stay near," she told him, "so when that bastard does to them what he did to me, I'll be here for them." There were other reasons, too. The opportunity to kill Reek might just present itself someday. Besides, Warbone had entranced her somewhat, and she wouldn't be alone. "I met a wolf in the mountains. He went through something like I did, where his memories just disappeared, and he came back to find everything he'd worked for was taken away. I'll probably look for him." Who else could she share her life with but someone who knew loss as keenly as she did?

What she said next wasn't fair, and she knew it fully, but she said it anyway: "you're welcome to come with me." She wanted nothing more than to have her family with her, but that would mean taking followers from Spring, and that was the unfair part of it. She rather doubted Casmir would stay with her, not when Laika was closer with Spring than she'd ever been with Saena, but she threw it out on a whim anyway. "It should have been you anyway," she told him, and having long since recovered her memory of shortly before she lost it, she shared, "I wanted you for a Beta, but didn't get the chance before... well. You should have become the Alpha. Til the girls were old enough, or maybe forever." Instead, Silver Creek had defaulted to Spring... and while Saena didn't resent her for keeping the pack afloat, and was in fact grateful, she did resent the fact that the pack she'd spent half her life building had not been given over to her family.

She also thought that none of this would ever have happened with Casmir at the helm of the pack, but she couldn't say that for sure, and dared not say that aloud. She couldn't blame Spring for the loss of her daughters, nor for her own shortcomings, even though jealousy and grief both fueled her choice to not return. She, Saena, was the one to blame for that.